Granik's 'Winter's Bone' quietly captivating

Debra Granik's superbly directed, acely acted atmospheric drama "Winter's Bone" works like a gritty backwoods police procedural -- without the police. It's a superior work of independent cinema, stark, fresh and devoid of Hollywood clichés and conventions.

In the poverty-stricken Missouri Ozarks (where the production was shot), 17-year-old Ree Dolly (Jennifer Lawrence in a riveting, Oscar-worthy performance) is stuck taking care of her two little siblings plus her catatonic mother, stoned on pills most of the time.

The sheriff delivers bad news: Her never-seen, meth-cooking dad Jessup put up the family house and land as bond for his recent release from jail. If he doesn't show up for court, Ree and her family will lose their dilapidated home.

So, the fiercely independent Ree searches for her father, navigating a paranoid, tight-lipped backwoods culture that makes mafia families look effusively friendly and gregarious. Each person she meets is connected in some way with illegal drug manufacturing and is more threatening and misogynistic than the last. This, despite the fact Ree appears to be related to everyone in the entire county.

Her creepy, cocaine-snorting uncle Teardrop (John Hawkes in a combustible, edgy performance) becomes an unlikely hero in this understated story of one teen's bravery and sacrifice, captured in telling detail on digital Red Camera by Michael McDonough.

The bleak and rusty landscapes of discarded cars and buses become as much characters as the Ozark women folk, whom we assume must be victims of the macho male members of their tribe.

Not so. There are many jarring secrets in "Winter's Bone," a quietly captivating, sparse and lean drama that never sounds a false note or reveals more than it needs to.

"Winter's Bone" opens today at the Century Centre in Chicago and the Renaissance Place in Highland Park. Not rated. For mature audiences. 100 minutes. Rating: ★ ★ ★ ★